Real hands. That gave me an idea, and I visualized ghostly blue hands coming from my griffin tattoos; the same way I usually performed boundary magic. I’d spent so many months using my magic only to lay ghosts that I felt rusty, but I had done this sort of thing before, hadn’t I?
Not for fine motor work, though. When I tried to pinch off the leak, my ghost-fingers were too big and thick for such a delicate maneuver. And John was losing blood quickly.
Blood.
My blood was filled with boundary magic; boundary magic wouldn’t allow death. Would that work? It was the only idea I had, so I released my mindset, my regular vision returning. I reached for the metal poker, but then I spotted the handle of a small penknife under John’s right arm and grabbed that instead. It was already covered in blood, and my fingers were slippery, but I managed to cut the base of my right hand, dragging the blade through the meat harder than I’d intended. Then I pressed it to John’s injury.
After a few seconds, I dropped into my boundary mindset again to look at John’s death-essence. It wasn’t leaking anymore, but it didn’t look any better either. I held my hand to the wound, praying as hard as I could, pressing that prayer into John. Live, live, live, live.
I don’t know how much time passed like this, but the next thing I was aware of was Quinn’s voice at my ear. “That’s enough. Lex, that’s enough.”
I felt him pulling my hand away from John, then tying the wound up tight with a ripped piece of fabric. I had no idea where he’d gotten it. I was light-headed, but I managed to focus on his face. There was a tiny spatter of blood near his chin, and his skin was a little flushed. He must have fed—vampires could get sustenance from witch or werewolf blood, although they couldn’t press them—because the sight and smell of my blood didn’t seem to bother him. “Did you find more of them?”
He nodded, grim. “Two werewolves and a witch. There were six total. Clara took out three of them.”
So the dead bodies on the floor had probably been werewolves too. Vampires would have decayed, and witches or humans would have been easy for Clara to dispatch. “Did you kill them?” I asked, my voice distant.
“Only the werewolves. The witch is still alive, for now.” He cocked his head. “The ambulance is almost here.”
A second later, I heard the siren too. “The EMTs—” I began.
“I’ll press them,” Quinn said firmly. “You should go check on Charlie.”
“Right . . . right.”
“Maybe take off your flannel shirt?”
I looked down at myself and saw the blood that coated my sleeves and the front of my shirt. “Right.”
I tried to unbutton my shirt, but my hands were clumsy with the bandage, and eventually Quinn reached over and did it for me. “Thanks,” I mumbled, checking the rest of me. My T-shirt looked okay, and the few smears on my jeans could have been any number of things. Good enough. I staggered to my feet and headed for the stairs. There were no bloody footprints on the wooden steps, and I realized with remote satisfaction that no one had come close to Charlie.
I traipsed up the steps and down the hallway toward Charlie’s room, my head spinning. Morgan had sent people after Charlie. Morgan had sent people after Charlie. Now that the danger was more or less stalled, I felt the anger building inside me, and my steps quickened. I would kill Morgan for this.
Then I reached Charlie’s doorway, and the dark cloud of rage and fear began to lift. Charlie had that effect on me—or perhaps Charlie being a null had that effect on my boundary magic.
Either way, I pushed open the door and saw my niece, fast asleep on her stomach, on the rug in front of the hamper. Her arm was wrapped around her favorite stuffy, the teddy bear that Sam had given her when she was born. I felt my whole body go slack with relief.
Since Charlie was all right, I took a moment in the hall bathroom to scrub my hands and forearms free of John’s blood, working carefully around the makeshift bandage.
When I went back into Charlie’s room, the ambulance had parked outside, and red and white lights were pounding through her windows and reflecting off the ceiling. As I got close to her, I saw that the short, hard-foam sword that she used to play pirates was lying next to her other arm. My breath caught in my throat.
She was four, goddammit.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Hi, Charlie-bug,” I whispered, not sure if she was really awake. I went and sat down next to her.
“Aunt Lex.” Abandoning the sword, she got a firm grip on her bear and crawled into my lap. The siren cut off, though I could still see the flashes of red light playing on Charlie’s ceiling. “Is Daddy okay?”
“He got hurt, baby, but I think he’ll be okay,” I told her, praying I wasn’t lying. I pulled her into a hug with my heart against hers, the same way I carried her to bed sometimes. “He’s going to go to the hospital. We’ll visit him tomorrow.”
She smiled and nestled her head on my shoulder. “’Kay.” Her eyes closed again.
I’m not sure how long we sat there, with Charlie fast asleep and me vacillating between agonizing over John’s status and marveling at my niece’s perfection. It had been such a close call. If Charlie hadn’t called me . . .
From downstairs, I could make out the sound of urgent voices and some running around, but in my cowardice, I didn’t go check on my brother-in-law. Some stupid, superstitious part of me imagined going down the stairs just in time to see the life leave his body. Eventually the lights began moving away from the house, and the siren started up again, which I took as a good sign—lights and sirens weren’t necessary for dead people.
A moment later, Quinn appeared in the doorway, holding a small backpack. He looked at us for a moment and smiled. “She’s getting so big.”
Relief blossomed in me. He wouldn’t look at me like that if John were dead. Still, I said, “He’s alive?”
Quinn nodded. “The paramedics don’t really know how. They said his heart should have stopped, with that much blood loss. They’re doing a transfusion right away.”
“Is he—” My voice caught, but Quinn understood.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said softly. “The EMTs couldn’t believe he made it this far. Whatever you did to him . . . he’s got a chance.”
I nodded, feeling numb. Quinn came over and sat down next to me, dropping the backpack so he could smooth Charlie’s hair. If John died, I would become her legal guardian, and I wasn’t ready for that. There was no way I could take care of her and still work for Maven, which meant . . . what? Maven could start using Charlie for Old World stuff? No. I’d have to give her to my parents or to one of my cousins to raise, and I wouldn’t be able to tell them about what Charlie was. My family would get pulled further into all this, and they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves.
I should never have agreed to guardianship, but I’d always assumed John would outlive me.
Quinn reached for the backpack and I realized dimly that it was the heavy-duty first aid kit we kept in the Jeep. He gently took my wounded hand, peeling back the bloodied scrap of cloth still wrapped around it. “This needs stitches,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “Just do the glue.”
Our first aid kid was serious; it included some of the skin adhesive ER docs used on small wounds, similar to Super Glue. Quinn uncapped the bottle and began sealing my wound.
Hot tears started to slide down my face. “I told John they could wait until tomorrow to leave,” I whispered. “I said it was safe.”
Quinn didn’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. He knew me too well, and he’d been a soldier once too. You made your best call in the moment, and you took responsibility if it fell apart. He just finished gluing the wound and kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry,” he said, very calmly. “We’re going to destroy her for this.”
See? He did know me.
While Quinn rebandaged my hand, I leaned back against the wall and looked down at the sleeping little girl cuddled against my chest. I would have to take her somewhere safe—my first thought, of course, was my family. I tried to remember if John had introduced anyone else in my family to Morgan when they’d dated. Could she know where the others lived? Could I take that risk?
“Katia,” I said, my brain finally beginning to work again. Charlie knew Katia; they’d spent time together before my aunt moved south. “Katia can take Charlie to a hotel tonight. I won’t let her tell me where they’re going. But John . . .” My voice faltered. Half of me wanted to be at his hospital bed, waiting to be there when he woke up. After all, he’d done it for me.
The other half was ready to tear out Morgan’s insides.
“You’ll need to call your family,” Quinn said. “We’ll come up with a story. I can arrange to have the house cleaned—” His voice broke off for a second, and I remembered that his usual cleaning team was a bunch of Hazel’s witches. Maven paid them—very well—to get rid of bloodstains when necessary, but I doubted they’d be working for him tonight.
He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to get Charlie safe and to get this witch talking.”
“Right.” I perked up a little. Nothing lifts your spirits quite like remembering you have a hostage. I figured Quinn had come up with a way to restrain her, but I didn’t need the details just yet.
There was so much to do. I rested my cheek lightly on Charlie’s head, wishing I could just stay right there with her. My injured hand ached, but I didn’t want to move. “She fell asleep with her sword,” I told Quinn.
“Well, of course she did.” He grinned, wide and sweet. “She’s yours, isn’t she?”
Then I began to cry in earnest.
Chapter 31
When I was sure I could talk without sobbing, I called my parents, who still kept a landline next to the bed in case there was an emergency in the night.
Unfortunately, my mother, the eternal worrier, answered first. I briefly ran through the story Quinn and I had concocted and asked if she and my father would go to the hospital to be with John. She agreed, of course—I could already hear them hurrying around in the background—and even offered to call John’s mother, Blossom. My mother knew I was intimidated by the old woman, and wanted to spare me the conversation. That small gesture almost made me cry again.
After I hung up, Quinn offered to carry Charlie downstairs for me, but I declined—less because I wanted to prove I was strong enough to do it myself, and more because I wanted the simple reassurance of her weight in my arms as long as I could have it.
So Quinn carried the teddy bear down the stairs ahead of us, and I followed slowly, checking each step for toys before I put my foot down. I felt like I was carrying delicate china.
We rounded the corner into the living room, and I stopped short. A young woman stood near Clara, surveying the carnage. She faced away from us, wearing black pants and a bland gray coat, her hands tucked into the coat pockets. I instantly shifted Charlie so I could reach for the revolver. I had it halfway up before the woman turned, and I realized with a shock that it was Maven. Maven with brown hair and conservative horn-rimmed glasses with a slight yellowish tint.